‘Your deceit is discovered, Mira Bai. Come with me. Begin your prayers.’

Ashok Acharya watched from the shadows of the great bastion. He himself recoiled from the actual exercise of force. The very sight of blood, even, troubled him. He’d contrived the business at the snake pit because there was no other way, but that was with the Ranee; there must be no doubt as to what he implied. But brute threats as now – he hadn’t the stomach for it, and certainly no pleasure. Let the subedar do his work. He’d watched him with others. The subedar most certainly took pleasure in it. And with a woman doubly so, a highborn Rajpoot especially.

Mira Bai said her prayers. She prayed for the protection of Kali, and for mercy if she was not spared, but first for strength.

The subedar and his men took her to the far end of the bastion, to the snake pit she’d heard of but never seen. There was no light but for the torches – terror enough – but then the pit and waiting death in the spreading hood of the cobra.

‘Om Sri Maha Kalikayai Namah,’ she began – I bow my head to the Divine Mother Kali …

‘You will tell what passes between the Ranee and the outside,’ said the subedar, grasping her by her arms and pushing her to the edge of the pit.

‘Om Sri Maha Kalikayai Namah …’

He shook her as if to let go. ‘You will tell what passes between the Ranee and the outside, or you will not see her again or the sky, or your husband or your children.’

‘Om Sri Maha Kalikayai Namah …’

‘By the curse of Lord Shiva, you tell what it is that passes!’

But Mira Bai would not tell.

The subedar swore, and spat words to one of his men, who hurried away as if possessed.

He pulled Mira Bai from the edge of the pit. No one before had ever defied him, he cried.

And Mira Bai looked not defiant but terrified.

He half dragged her from the bastion, out into the sunlight of the maidan which she’d thought she’d never again see. She began to sob.

He pushed her to her knees and yelled to the man he’d sent running, who now drove his heel into the small of her back.

She gasped and fell on her hands.

Out of the shadows came a brute figure, not a soldier by any description. A bhuttote, a strangler.

The roomal swung round her neck in one movement. She had no time to gasp again. In half a minute she lay still.

The onlookers – there were many – kept silent. It took repeated words of command to turn them away to their duties. Kill one, frighten a thousand.

The hijdas were silent too.

* * *

A general who declines to attack the enemy in a defensive position, advancing instead by another line in pursuit of his object, will (if he is able to pass-by with impunity) immediately force the enemy to abandon the position. For the enemy always has a dread of his retreat being cut off.